Editing Crime fiction (section)

=== Pseudonymous authors ===
In the history of crime fiction, some authors have been reluctant to publish their novels under their real names. More recently, some publish pseudonymously because of the belief that since the large booksellers are aware of their historical sales figures, and command a certain degree of influence over publishers, the only way to "break out" of their current advance numbers is to publish as someone with no track record.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, British County Court Judge Arthur Alexander Gordon Clark (1900–1958) published a number of detective novels under the alias [[Cyril Hare]], in which he made use of his profoundly extensive knowledge of the English legal system. When he was still young and unknown, award-winning British [[novelist]] [[Julian Barnes]] (born 1946) published some crime novels under the alias Dan Kavanagh. Other authors take delight in cherishing their [[alter ego]]s; [[Ruth Rendell]] (1930–2015) wrote one sort of crime novels as Ruth Rendell and another type as [[Barbara Vine]]; [[John Dickson Carr]] also used the pseudonym [[Carter Dickson]]. Author [[Evan Hunter]] (which itself was a pseudonym) wrote his crime fiction under the name of Ed McBain.